| Urgent | Not Urgent | ||
| Important | 1 | 2 | |
| Not Important | 3 | 4 |
“Not the freaking grid again,” John said. “Didn’t we cover this last time?”
“Yes John, we did. But this is an important refresher.
“When you start a business or take over your investments, you no longer have a CEO or boss telling you what to do or how to do it. You are now driving the bus and although many view it as a nicety to be your own boss, I view it as absolutely crucial to develop the drive to take control as well as discriminate how you use your time.”
“Go on,” John said.
“Covey’s grid classifies tasks into the following buckets:”
· Urgent and Important
· Urgent but Not Important
· Not Urgent but Important
· Not Urgent and Not Important
“An example of urgent and important might be the fact that your house is on fire. Either you put it out or it burns down. This is both urgent, there is an immediate need to put the fire out, and important, you don’t want to lose your house. An urgent but not important example would be a ringing phone. Although the person on the other end might have an emergency, for argument’s sake, let’s say they do not. The phone is ringing in your face, urgent, but for our example’s sake let us say that the person on the other end is trying to sell you a magazine subscription, not necessarily important.
“A not urgent but important task would be taking the time to put oil in your car. The car’s engine has not yet locked up, not urgent, but if you are not proactive, the engine could eventually lock up, important. A not urgent and not important task would be a time-waster such as playing video games, gossiping about a co-worker or drinking into the wee hours of the night only to be hung over the next day.”
“But those all sound fun to me,” John said.
“The point is, Covey prescribes that we spend the majority of our time, if not all of it in quadrant two, not urgent but important. This is where you will find all of the value-add, proactive tasks that enrich your life, business and investments. This is where you spend time reading, researching an investment or business, developing a business relationship, spending quality time with a co-worker or family, researching a new investment technique. This is where your time has the greatest leverage and if you really want to excel, you must always pay attention to
where you can get the most leverage.”
“I thought leverage traditionally applied to financing,” John said. “If I borrow money for an investment, I am said to be leveraged.”
“That is correct John,” I said, “but the key word you used is ‘traditional.’ Traditionally leverage is thought of as ‘I own an apartment house with a mortgage. I am now leveraged and if the property value goes up I realize a greater return on my money.’ This is an example of traditional leverage. The kind I am talking about is somewhat figurative but leads to real results. If you spend time with a disgruntled employee and as a result they become more productive, you have now leveraged your time to produce greater results. If you spend time developing an electronic newsletter that goes out to one-thousand people instead of sending them out one-by-one, you have now leveraged your time again. Always keep in mind, at the very least,
you do not want to be one to one in your leverage ratio and also keep in mind that Covey tells us that the other quadrants will try and pull our time out of quadrant two. A ringing phone prevents us from completing the newsletter. A time-waster such as gossiping at the water cooler eats away time that could be utilized in a productive pursuit. The house on fire will definitely put a crimp in the schedule.”
“But if the house is on fire, I have to put it out. I can’t just keep my nose in quadrant two while the house burns to the ground.”
“This is true,” I said. “Activities that end up in quadrant one, urgent and important, generally result from neglect that occurs quadrant two. If you f
ail to put oil in the car, a quadrant two activity, the car breaks down and now you are stranded on the side of the road trying to arrange for a ride and a tow-truck, a quadrant one activity. If you neglect to spend time with an employee and they shoot up the workplace, it is because you did not give them attention in quadrant two. Always remember, quadrant two is about proactive time management and prevention. You should strive to spend the majority of your time here if you wish to reach financial independence.”
“This makes sense to me,” John said. “I can see how I spend some of my time really just marching time … just wasting it. I’m certainly not perfect at time management as I am sure you are not, but I can see opportunities already where I can turn wasted time into more productive time. For example, I tend to watch a lot of TV at night and I am sure I can trim some of that back. One problem I see though. Although Covey’s time quadrant seems logical and quadrant two activities make sense as it relates to time management, but the reality is I know my day to day activities will pull on my time from quadrant two as you said, and more than likely, the day to day time wasting tasks will probably win. So, my question is, how does one go about kee
ping the bigger picture of financial independence in the forefront?” John asked.
“Well that’s easy,” I said, “through goal-setting,”
“Great.”
GOALS! – The Destination on the Roadmap
Our Goal Setting Format
“Three things to keep in mind John when setting goals. If you do not follow these then your goal is little more than wishful thinking.”
- 1. Write it Down
- 2. Be Specific
- 3. Create Ten Yard Plays and Fifty Yard Plays
Write it Down
“Again, if it is not written then it is nothing more than wishful thinking. A goal is a dream with a deadline attached and the first step you need to take is to write it down and preferably to put it in a spot where you can see it when you wake, work and go to bed. Write it down.”
“I’ll tape it to my forehead,” John said.
Be Specific
“In order for the goal to have weight and specificity, it must have a deadline. Remember the second half our little clichéd saying … ‘A goal is a dream …’
“I know,” John said, “with a deadline attached. Very poignant. Do I get a gold star?”
“Not so fast John. Just remember, it is much better to say ‘I want to weigh 171 by May 1st 2015 at 7pm’ than it is to say, ‘I wish to be lighter.’ The first example is specific. I can jump on the scale at 7pm on May 1st, 2015 and see if in fact I hit the mark. The second example is very vague and just to throw out an old anachronism, ‘if you aim for nothing, you are sure to hit it.’”
Create Ten Yard Plays and Fifty Yard Plays
“Look, the importance of goals John is to challenge yourself to hit extremely rewarding heights, but at the same time you do not want to undercut yourself and erode your self-confidence. Thus, you want to set ten yard plays along-side fifty yard plays.”
“Great, now you are using sport-metaphors,” John said. “Can you give me some examples?”
“Sure. Let’s say you want to attain a net worth of one million dollars, a fifty yard pass. Now,
if you are standing at square one with zero net worth and no means of income, can you reasonably expect to obtain this goal within a year John?”
“Well no, I suppose that would be highly unlikely and unrealistic,” he said.
“And would this be a ten yard play or a fifty yard play?”
“Why do you treat me like I am four years old?”
“That’s right John, it is a fifty yard play and although it might be a worthwhile goal, it is not realistic at this juncture.”
“Glad we got that settled.”
“I am not saying that one should not aspire for great wealth. As a matter of fact I would say that along with family, career, health, service and hobbies, finance should be at the top of your goal-setting categories. If you want a million dollars then by all means, go ahead and set a goal for a million dollars, just keep your expectations somewhat in a reality check. Perhaps it will take five years to reach it and that is fine. Remember, our goals should challenge us as well as build our confidence in moving forward. Set some ten yard plays such as ‘I will walk 30 minutes a day by March 31st, 2015 at 7pm.’ This will serve to boost your self-confidence. Also, on bigger goals, chunk them down into smaller parts as necessary to manage your progress. If you want a million dollars net
worth and you are currently at $500,000, perhaps you need to set a goal to reach $750,000 first before moving on to the big goal.
“Also remember John, it takes five swings of an axe a day.”
“What the …”
“If you have to chop down a large tree in the woods, you can accomplish the task by taking five swings of an axe a day.”
“Why wouldn’t I take more than five a day?” John asked. “That seems like a bad use of time to only take five. And why wouldn’t I use a chainsaw?”
“That is not the point John. The point is this: if you have to accomplish a large task it is best to chunk down that task into smaller parts and then daily, do five things that will move you towards that goal. If you were traveling between two cities on foot and took five steps a day, you would eventually get there.”
“Unless you get hit by a bus,” John said. “Why wouldn’t you just take a car? Tree metaphors, travel metaphors, you are full of them.”
“Again John you miss the point. Now, let us move on to the goal-setting toolbox.”
“I can’t wait.”
Our Goal-Setting Toolbox
· Keep it in a place you can see it.
· Read it 3x a day.
· Rewrite your goals a couple of times a day.
· Visualize as complete.
· Affirm it out loud – present tense.
· Track it – if you can measure it you can reach it.
· Victory log.
· Plan the night before.
· Vision boards.
· The question.
“If you’ve been around motivational, goal-setting circles long enough, you inevitably will have run across the law of attraction, and no John, I am not going to ask you walk across burning coals.
The Law of Attraction simply says this; ‘You Become What You Think About.’
“Now many gurus will profess that there is a magic to this whole science of goal-setting and effectuation and although I do believe there is a little magic to this whole thing, I am neither a guru nor a nut. I believe that the techniques I am about to explain contain approximately 25% magic. The rest is focus, hard-work and persistence.”
Keep It in a Place Where You Can See It
“Once you have your goals written out, I recommend you place them on your night-stand next to your bed, at work on your desk, in your car and carry a travel version with you so you have them on business trips and vacations. As a matter of fact, I recommend you build a sheet that contains your written out, specific goals on the front along with visualization material which I will cover later, and your mission statement on the back. This will allow you to review your personal strategic pyramid on a regular basis. Remember, Mission, Vision, Goals are at the top.”
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